The Door to Chaos

Chapter 1 - Through the Threshold

The pain was excruciating, but brief. It was followed by... nothing. He could not hear, nor see, nor smell; he did not feel his lungs, his heart, his hands, his feet, he could have been paralysed and not have known it. He should have felt fear, felt anything, but even this was denied to him. All he had left were his thoughts, his memories. It was extremely infuriating. He had no means to tell just how long he just... existed like that, holding on to his spiritual self, his sanity, by sheer willpower alone. And still, he just knew somehow that he was not alone, that there were others around, many others, he could nearly hear them whisper and laugh, hear their agonised cries.

And then, just as shockingly, some sensation returned.

Riddick was still floating in a stark black emptiness, but now some inexorable force was pulling him forward. Something had caught him in a full body grip, something like a strong wind pressing down on every inch of his body. He tried to struggle, to fight back, both furious and grateful for even this bit of sensation brushing against him, but there was nothing to fight against, his arms and legs moved sluggishly and encountered nothing.

His mouth opened wide and he tried to draw a breath. He still could not feel any air entering his lungs, but for the first time he felt the effort roughening his throat when he bellowed his rage at god and death denying him, even though no sound left his lips.

The sensation of movement increased, he was picking up speed. Wherever he was being sent, there was nothing he could do for now. With all his willpower he strangled the feeling of panic rising in him, replacing it by determination. He would not loose himself. Never. Ever. Not for god. Not for death.

A faint light shimmered before him and the invisible hands pulling at him picked up yet more speed. One of his hands hit a solid object, unless the object was pushed into his hand? He grabbed it by reflex, a smooth circular surface, like glass, curiously warm against his palm ; then the source of the light was looming up before him, a huge archway covered by something that looked like smoked glass in ebullition. The dim light seemed to come from the other side of the strange barrier.

Riddick had no time for more observations as the invisible hands pulled stronger at him, dragging him into the light, violently pushing at him, drawing him into the gate to elsewhere.

***

The rectangular room was quite large. Riddick was kneeling on a raised stone dais in the centre of a sunken stone pit some twenty feet deep. A brief glance around showed him several rows of stone benches all around the room, mounting in steep steps. And a group of men in long flowing robes were standing in a circle around the dais and pointing wooden sticks at him. The lack of visible weapons conflicted with the confidence they exuded.

Riddick straightened slowly, a tall, hooded shadow unfolding slowly toward the far ceiling. Standing around six feet tall, his muscular, his intimidating, athletic frame covered by a black robe, he seemed to tower over the assistants. Riddick was standing very still, his shined eyes glowing softly with a whitish blue light, as he got a first real look at the item in his right hand.

A mirror? What the fuck am I supposed to do with a little mirror?

He was about to drop it carelessly to his feet when he found to his own surprise that he had tucked it securely in one of the hidden pockets of his long, black robe. He lifted his hand to his brow in an unconscious gesture of bafflement and his fingers touched the hem of a hood, pushing it back, and discovering his shaven head. He found that even though the light in this room was rather bright it was not as painful as it should be to his light-sensitive eyes.

Something brushed softly against Riddick's back. He whirled around. Behind him on the dais stood an ancient, crumbling stone archway, unsupported by any surrounding wall and hung with a tattered black curtain. The curtain was fluttering very slightly as though it had just been touched, although the air in the room was still and cold and he realised that this must have been what had touched him a moment ago, more, he knew that he had gotten here - wherever 'here' might be - through that archway.

One of the men surrounding the dais in a large circle approached until he stood at the bottom of the small stairway to the dais, his wooden stick still pointed at Riddick's heart. He looked rather like an old lion. There were streaks of grey in his mane of tawny hair and his bushy eyebrows; he had keen yellowish eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a certain rangy, loping grace, even though he walked with a slight limp.

"Whoever you may be, I recommend you not to make any fast movements right now. Where is Sirius Black? Kingsley, one movement from him and you stun him!"

A tall, black man with a single gold earring nodded and pointed his own stick at Riddick.

"Bode. Croaker. Care to explain this?"

Two of the remaining three men were still staring open-mouthed at Riddick.

"I... we... don't, that's to say...Bode you told me you were SURE of that incantation... eight years of study, now this..."

Riddick slowly felt his anger taking over. He did not know where he was, but these two guys looked guilty like fuck. They knew something. His instinct told him that his presence here was very much the responsibility of these guys. He had had enough.

"That's it. You people are in trouble. Where the FUCK am I?"

His hand slid inside his robe, reaching for one of his serrated knives. Instead, he found that he had grabbed and was now brandishing a long, black, wooden stick. In the second while he was staring dumbfounded at the strange item, the tall black man named Kingsley acted.

He yelled, "Petrificus Totalus!" and Riddick felt his arms snap to his side. The stick fell from his fingers and he went down as if he had taken a direct hit by a stunner. What the hell? He could not even move his eyelids anymore.

The deep, slow voice added, "Mobilcorpus!" and he was floating in the air Shit, how did he DO that....

And suddenly Riddick knew. He knew how to do this and many other spells. He seemed to remember them, but these were not really his own memories. They were the memories of a man called Sirius. Sirius... Black. The sticks were no sticks, they were magic wands, he was in the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic, and the man who had just hexed him was called Kingsley Shacklebolt and was an Auror.

Riddick wanted to groan, this was worse than torture. The unbidden memories kept coming and coming, flashes of hate and torture for endless years, memories of a dishevelled black-haired kid with bright green eyes like Jack and a lightning shaped scar on his forehead.

Flashes of growing up in a family that hated him So that's what having a family is like? Looks like I'm not the only one people couldn't stand. A battle for his life in this very same room, on this very same dais. A heavy lidded woman with long dark hair laughing at him, laughing with evil delight as he fell backwards. Not mine... that's not me, its that Sirius bloke who fell.

Cold stone under his back told him that his floating body must have landed on the floor beside the dais. A face swam into his field of vision. Riddick looked helplessly up into the evasive greenish eyes of a red-haired wizard, he's a wizard his new memory supplied.

"Peasegood, he'll have to do. We can't start fishing for Black again; it took months to set up this spell. Just alter his memory to make sure he fits in at Hogwarts and does not do anything silly, then bring him up to my office. We'll talk about your newest blunder later."

"Yes Minister." the red-haired wizard nodded and pointed his wand at Riddick's head.

"Obliviate."